Stochastic Processes and Their Applications in Business

The objective of this book is to help students interested in probability and statistics, and their applications to understand the basic concepts of stochastic process and to equip them with skills necessary to conduct simple stochastic analysis of data in the field of business, management, social science, life science, physics, and many other disciplines.The book contains such standard topics as probability, random variables and probability distributions, generating functions, stochastic processes, deterministic and stochastic approaches to mathematically model real life phenomena, finite and infinite Markov chains and stationary distributions, continuous time Markov processes with discrete state space, branching processes, and applications of stochastic processes in queueing systems, business and manpower planning. Efforts have been made to draw examples from a large array of disciplines to demonstrate the wide applicability of stochastic processes. Although a good amount of knowledge in elementary probability and calculus would be of great help, nonmathematically oriented readers can also use the book to apply the ideas of stochastic process since the examples are straightforward and have been organized in a logical step-by-step fashion.